


What now

by wampusthunder



Category: Veep
Genre: Dogs, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-31
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-08-12 04:02:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 13,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7919785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wampusthunder/pseuds/wampusthunder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amy Brookheimer has spent her entire life thinking she could make a difference by making Selina Meyer the first woman president of the US. Now that Selina's lost the election for her second term, Amy needs to evaluate whether she actually changed anything, and what to do now that she's lost the place she thought so hard to conquer in politics. First chapter is honestly just meta- set after immediately after season 5 finale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Water, salt

Amy was staring at a wall. It was her apartment’s living room wall, and for a minute she thought she had never really looked at it. She had seen it, she thought, but she had never really looked at it. Wow, she thought. I’ve really been missing out on a whole lot. 

“J fucking K, that whole Eat, Pray, Love thing has got to be bullshit.”, she said. Was she talking to the wall, was she talking to herself? I’ve got to be drunk, she thought, even though she couldn’t really remember. From the moment she left Selina’s plane to the moment Buddy gave her a lift home, everything already looked so distant, like a moment in history that history would forget, unless maybe some obsessive compulsive grad student dug out 20 years from now and went like “Whatever happened to Selina Meyer?”.  
However distant as she may have felt on her ride home, she knew this would be a defining moment in her own personal history, and that was why she quietly tried to soak it all in, the rain and the stupid parade and the streets that led her out of the White House. They were all part of this living museum, a thing of the past, a site to behold and never go back to. And for the first time Amy felt too like an exposed object in a random corner of that museum, next to all the dead men walking that came before her.  
It's funny, isn't it, that some people will just remember so findly chunks of their lives when their lives mattered, and yet not necesserily miss it. A week before she was hired by Selina, Amy worked for a Michigan Senator, Kassie Wegener. Since Wegener had been talking of retiring, Amy only had the job for a couple of months. She never understood how someone- specially a person in a position of power- could just stop. Resign themselves to the life of the powerless people. Basically, just wait for death. Wegener could've won the next election had she wanted to run. 

Amy was trying to think. It didn’t matter whether she’d been talking to the wall or not. She was being introspective. That is something useless lazy people do. They sit, and they think. Ok, maybe don’t be so judgemental. That is something people do; stare and walls and think about their lives- which are made up of staring at walls and thinking.  
But could these last eighteen years been better spent staring at walls and noticing detail? I’m just not cut out for this bullshit, she thought. Amy knew she would be feeling just as much of a failure had she had children like Sophie, or married some guy just because that is what people did. Women, anyway. 

So the question was not whether her life would have been less of a waste if she hadn’t made the choices that she did. Life would always, at some point, feel like a waste. In the end, the real choice was “What would you rather have wasted it on?”, which is arguably very fucked up. 

When you think about it, there are many nice things that also turn out to be wasteful. 

 

Amy, Amy, Amy. Efficiency is pointless, when everything is a waste. 

But see, the sea is a waste. The whole ocean is wasteful and takes too much space. And the water comes and goes in streams inside the gigantic puddle that is the ocean. Suddenly Amy wished she could take one piece of water from the ocean, Amy thought, and know its entire history, where it went and what it saw, and how many streams it’s been a part of. One great piece of the ocean. She was a bit like that, wasn't she? Part of a huge whole of... well, whatever. There will be pictures of her on history books, but no one will ever know who she actually was- she was just going to be the fantastic-looking woman who is just there, next to Selina Meyer and her bagman. Middle-schoolers would draw moustaches on her face, and yet she was just there. Just like pieces of the ocean- each with a particular history and well-travelled; each of them by now gone another way. But fucking Jesus, she could freeze it; keep it in the fridge. A piece of waste inside her own house. Salted, useless piece of water. How are you like this, sea? Why would you doom an entire planet to being water and salt? Drink it and you only get thirstier- like so many other things. Kill it with a knife; the sea. Cut through the flow. Drown, if you can't think of anything else. 

"Maybe I need to go to fucking politician rehab. They should really make that a thing.", she said to the wall. The wall was reluctant to comment on the plausibility of Ms. Brookheimer's actions. 

To hell with it, Amy thought, googling her own name. She had a page on Wikipedia, which fortunately didn’t get as many haters as Selina’s, but it was still pretty shit to look at. That was her entire fucking life, divided onto four sections. She always thought having a Wikipedia page was a big deal, but now she realised how miniscule it made her look. Born 1980 (36 years old). Early Years. Yale Law School and First Meyer Campaigns (she went to Yale Law School, cammon! She deserved better than what she got). Vice President’s Chief of Staff and Pregnancy Scandal (oh, that). Resignation and Return to Presidential Staff. 

After a lengthy period of stagnant staring, Amy began to dissociate and the page became a wide, protuberant blank. She must have changed something, at least. Clean Jobs. Nope, that didn’t work. She had pushed for it because she believed in it, and then told Selina to stop pursuing it because it would harm her politically. She had bargained some of her beliefs in exchange for favours, and forgotten about the rest while she was at it. What had it all been for, though? Selina’s goal had always been to be president and, once she finally was, to remain president. It meant shit. It was all just a huge puddle of yesterday’s bullshit soup. 

Amy was now tired of introspection. She turned the TV on, once she was able to replace the remote’s batteries (hoping they weren't as old as the suspicious liquid coming out of them indicated) and was slightly shocked to see Dan Egan’s zoomed-in grin on CBS News.  
“Well, Carl, if you ask me, Montez is the symbol of a new America arising. Selina Meyers is done for.”  
“Didn’t you work for her? At the recount?”  
“Well, see Carl, I worked at the recount because I believed that it was the right thing to do. We had, at that point, missing ballots. It would be morally repulsive for me not to have helped.”  
“You have got to be kidding me.”, said Amy, at Dan, and the TV, and the wall. What a fucking asshole. What a fucking colossal asshole. And fucking CBS. Guess he found somebody to sleep with him there. Or maybe Sophie switched jobs or something. Maybe she’d be getting a new nephew sometime soon. 

"Morally repulsive". Interesting choice of words, Dan, given that is your very definition on the special edition, Shove it in your Ass Amy Brookheimer dictionary of synonyms. Egan, Dan: shit. Biggest shit on the planet. If shit had two faces, that would be him. Morally repulsive. Should be flushed down the toilet immediately to avoid further contamination.  
Ok, maybe that wasn’t fair, given that she and Dan had managed to maintain, as of lately, what uninformed, DC-newbies could call a friendship. Amy however refused to see it as a friendship. You cannot assume human feelings would ever emanate from Dan Egan. No, what Dan and Amy had was a partnership. They knew how to work well together, and had a sufficient level of trust in one another to get their jobs done. Although, truth be told, trust is a dangerous word as well. Amy shook her head as to get rid of all the Dan thoughts. Who cares about Dan, anyway? She shouldn’t have gotten this mad at him, just for doing what he did. That was just how he was. Maybe he could even get her a job on CBS too.  
“It’s not that I’m morally repulsive. I’m more like morally challenged.”  
“You’re a bullshitter, Dan, that’s how you survive. And also whoring yourself out.”  
“There’s no shame in it.”  
“Well.”  
They’d had that conversation a long time ago. A long time ago she had loved Dan, or thought she loved him, back when she thought she could separate real life from politics. Truth is, though, everything is politics. It's all about negociating and hypocrisy and bulshitting. Politicians just do it best.  
"The only reason people hate politicians is because they are jealous. They don't have it in them to run themselves, but they're just as corrupt as any DC guy. But, really, life is an endless run.", Dan continued.  
"Too simplistic, Egan. There's a difference between public and private."  
"No one likes politicians in person."  
"That's not true."  
"Have you ever met a politician that you liked?"  
"Yes."  
"You're full of shit."  
"Well, maybe I'm a politician."

The wall heard her laugh as the recollection of the conversation invaded the room. She had been so hard on him, Dan, for being full of shit. But maybe he had just been more prepared to admit it than her.  
"Well, aren’t I one ruthless motherfucker." Again, no answer from the wall.  
Her thoughts suddenly stood by a silent epiphany, brought by what could only be defined as a black light pointed at her brain, looking for guilt spots. Amy was presented with a lot of facts which had been previously ignored:

She had been in it for herself. And she hadn’t been afraid to do what needed to be done. It was for the best, she told herself. I would always tell myself it was for the best, and when Selina became president things would be different. And when Selina was president, I just thought that when she was actually elected, we could really start to do things… I don’t think we would have ever actually done or changed anything. We were just in it for... being in it. All of us. 

 

Amy had first met Dan in the middle of a campaign for a now retired bullfighter called Gunther O’Malley. He presented as a real challenge to market, as he didn’t have particularly strong opinions about anything but the Irish Potato Famine. “We must not let that happen here”, was his slogan. Fortunately it made for a very open interpretation. He became Senator for North Carolina with 82 percent of the vote.  
Amy hadn’t really cared about Gunther O’Malley’s political beliefs (although she did agree with the one), but she took up the job as to get experience. Dan had taken it up as a way to go down on the campaign manager, Beth McGuire. She was a mildly influential lady in North Carolina’s Politics.  
“Whore”, she said.  
“Amy, politics is not about values, or right and wrong, or anything like that.”  
“I know, I’m not stupid. Politics is about power, asshole.”, she said. “But some things get made on the way.”  
“But we’re all here for the power.”  
“You can be here for both. And like you have any power whatsoever. Being McGuire’s dildo hardly counts as an influential political position.”  
“Well, she does give me some tips, you know. DC eats you alive. It is not made for boys like you. I feel like in her head she’s Meryl Streep on ‘The Bridges of Madison’.”  
“Ugh, that movie is the worst.”  
“Wait till you’re McGuire’s age.”  
“Fuck you.”  
“You know, you gotta be careful. DC eats you alive. You never know. You might come out different from when you started.”  
“Thanks for the head’s up, dildo. Anyway, you don’t seem too worried about that yourself.”  
“Oh please. Like I could become any worse.”  
“Maybe there’s always worse. There’s always the guy who lost to O’Malley’s potato famine campaign slogan.”  
“Cheers to that guy.”  
Amy dragged her glass through the table instead of raising it. “To getting eaten alive”, she said. 

Well, right now that she was getting, fully awake, through DC's digestive system, she would love to retrieve that toast.


	2. The deserts and the leftovers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Due to a desperate bargain, Amy ends up having to take care of Mike's dog, Jonah Ryan. Yes, it was done on purpose. We also get a first-hand account of Amy's date with Jonah (human Jonah) back in season one.

Before they left the White House for good, Selina had encouraged her staff to take whatever was expensive and easy to carry with them, so they wouldn’t end up with Montez. Amy had been fast enough to get as much alcohol as she could. She had been particularly determined to snatch a Portuguese wine which had been a gift from the Portuguese president. Or do they have a Prime-Minister? Well, she doesn’t need to know about this stuff anymore. She’ll just go work at a retail store or something. Or get married and have kids with Buddy. And live in the Nevada desert, in a house in the middle of the sand. It does sound mildly appealing, doesn’t it- from the desert, no one would hear her scream; she could scream into the void for an hour after breakfast and feel renovated by nine thirty. But then where would she go?  
When she spent that week with Buddy; last week- god, it seemed as if years had passed now. It hadn’t quite hit her then, that Selina Meyer was done. Maybe it was the desert. It seems like nothing can get to that place. Walking through sand is the same as walking on a treadmill. She was just the kind of person who preferred to go from A to B.  
Some people feel claustrophobic in the city, with the people and the traffic and the fucking jaywalkers, and also the buildings. They complain about buildings- who complains about buildings? Do you want to go live in a shack? That would be great for the government, actually. Amy never understood how people could live in the middle of nowhere; see the place where the skyline meets the ground, as if that was the end of the horizon. It just seems like there is a wall; like there the sky is a wall too hard to break. Agoraphobia. Yeah, she definitely has that. She can’t move to the desert. For fuck’s sake, she can’t even watch Netflix without getting uneasy for not being completely plugged- sometimes Netflix requires a lot of attention. She loves House of Cards, but sometimes it just has to wait.  
The doorbell rang an off-key welcome at about noon. Its sound startled Amy, who wasn’t used to visitors. A vague memory about an arrangement of some sort came to her mind- oh, fucker’s disgrace. It’s Mike.  
The untrimmed moustache on the face of what looked like an anorexic walrus indicated his three new babies had been keeping his mind busy. There was an attempt of smiling by both parts, but Amy’s fell flat and Mike’s, paired up with the redness on his eyes, seemed like the smile of a borderline crazed man. He was holding a Jack Russel terrier on his lap.  
“Wow, you look like your body died but your soul hasn’t noticed yet.”, Amy said.  
“I would make a joke about you having no soul, but I’m too tired. Consider it done. Also you were really kind to take Jonah Ryan.”  
“Yeah, sure.”  
Amy had agreed to take the dog somewhere between trying to convince Mike to forge classified information and backtracking into telling him it was all true, so he didn’t have to worry at all. Now, it really didn’t seem that important.  
“Why is his name Jonah Ryan?”  
“Well, you know… Jonah!”, then Mike laughed. “I get to say things like Jonah, don’t poo on the carpet.”  
“This is sad.”  
“Yeah…”, Mike laughed again. “Let me tell you- the life of a stay at home dad- not easy!”  
Amy slowly started moving the door.  
“Oh, by the way, Jonah Ryan has somewhat of a hormonal unbalance.”  
“So, you just gave me a dog that is a pervert?”  
“No different from his counterpart, hum? I was gonna castrate him, but the feeling just…”  
Amy banged the door on his face. She stared at her new roommate. Great, now she had to schedule a castration. She’d make Mike pay for it, that’s for sure- he may have three kids to feed, but Jonah Ryan’s hormonal unbalance had been omitted by him when they made the deal. If he didn’t pay, she’d sue him- her Harvard Law diploma, if anything, allowed her to be extremely petty when it came to potential lawsuits.  
After a couple of glasses of Portuguese wine, however, Amy’s chore started to sound a lot better. She was castrating a dog named Jonah Ryan- she should take pictures and send it to everyone in Congress. Maybe Mike’s joke wasn’t so bad after all? Obviously it wasn’t clever, but she appreciated how invested he had been in the bullying of Jonah.  
So she decided to make the best out of that situation- she texted Dan: you want to go see Jonah Ryan being castrated?  
The dog had been pretty calm up until then, and she almost felt bad about laughing about cutting off his penis. Poor Jonah (the dog). It really wasn’t fair to him. It’s like naming your child Adolf Hitler- okay, fine, maybe not Adolf Hitler. But, you know, Justin Bieber, Charlie Sheen, Selina Meyer.  
Not to mention this dog would have been a far better congressman than the actual Jonah. Less damage. Laughing at her own joke, Amy was glad she was alone- because otherwise it would have been one of those moments when no one laughs but you.  
Dan had replied to her text: when, where, can I bring a video camera, can I be the one to do it  
The dog continued to look at her as if he would trust her with his life. It’s okay, she told him, you’ll be asleep. I hope. Don’t look at me like that.  
That was the most maternal thing Amy had ever said. She felt disgusted with herself. The dog, on the other hand, had taken her interaction with him as a pass to jump on her couch, and then or her lap, and just stand there with his tong out. Well, on the plus side, it was better than having the other Jonah Ryan do this (she would probably die- she wondered whether Jonah had ever accidently smashed people during sex- she shrugged at the thought and, unconsciously, petted her dog).  
Amy and Jonah had gone on one date, which had simply been a sacrifice she was forced to make for political scheming. In other words, she had been chosen as the group’s sacrificial lamb. She was always the group’s sacrificial lamb.  
Jonah had taken her to an appalling themed restaurant called “The Leftovers”. Amy remembered the name specifically, since it took her a great while to understand if they were actually serving other people’s rejected food (and, in that case, where did they even get the food in the first place?). Jonah assured her that this wasn’t the way it worked, proceeded to explain every item on the menu- even though they were, well, under the name of the dish in a smaller font-, and finished by saying he got a White House discount. If she ever wanted to use it, she could. All she had to do was say his name.  
“So, if I just come in here, and say Jonah Ryan, they’ll give me a discount. If I just come here and go to the waiter and randomly say your name, he will raise an eyebrow and give me special treatment?”  
“Well, you’d have to say more than my name…”  
At that point the waiter had arrived to collect their dishes.  
“Jonah Ryan.”, Amy said; a dead-pan expression drawn on her face.  
“Pardon me?”  
“No, what she means is… You’re just doing this out of spite, aren’t you? Well, that’s fucking childish, Amy, I expected more from you and the Veep’s office. I won this date and that means I’m ten drinks from getting to fuck you, and I expect you to take this seriously and make the most of this experience, otherwise it doesn’t count as a date. Frankly, if you keep on with this negativity I’m not sure if you’ll even appear fuckable to me by the end of tonight. I thought this was going well until you mocked me. Obviously you’d have to say more than my name to…”  
The waiter intervened:  
“Wait, your name is Jonah Ryan?”  
“The one and only.”, Jonah said proudly. “See how they know me?”  
“I’m gonna have to ask you to leave, sir.”  
“What?”  
“There have been a couple of incidents here involving a Jonah Ryan… Or two, at least. In this last week, two different men who declared to be named Jonah Ryan requested for the White House discount.”  
“Well, I’m the real one!”  
“Even if you are, you’ve reached your monthly limit.”  
“What… why? Oh, no, my forum buddies! Traitors…”  
“You have forum buddies?”, Amy asked. She really was making the best of this experience.  
“I told them that when they came to the city they could use my discount… But they live in Norway… I never thought… Wait, they’re in town, use my discount, and don’t even tell me they’re here?”  
“They sounded pretty American to me”, said the waiter.  
“What forum was it?”, Amy laughed.  
“It’s for discussing Swedish manga. Sweden’s got the best graphic art, I don’t know why people still read the Japanese ones. Go West!”, he said.  
The waiter was unfazed. “Are you staying or leaving?”  
“Shit, I only have ten dollars. I thought I was gonna get the discount…”  
“I’ll pay, just get me out of here.”, said Amy.  
“Oh, calm down, Amelia, I’m not going to make you pay for my meal. I’m a gentleman, and I earned this date.”  
So, Amy payed her check and left him there, protesting. Is this how you treat government officials?, she heard Jonah screaming on her out. Though probably not for the right reasons, that had been the most fun she’d had in while.  
Oh, by the way, the restaurant was called “The Leftovers” because that was the name of the owner’s punk-EMO band. Jonah bragged about being the substitute’s substitute base player. The band sucked. Jonah waved at the main singer but he simply turned his head.  
Everyone’s at the Veep’s office would wish they had been present at the scene when Amy told them all what happened the next morning.  
She got off the couch and calmly assembled her outfit for the day. Cammon, Jonah, let’s go castrate you, she said. Again, the dog looked unhappy.  
“Sorry, sorry”, she said, again, surprised with her own words. “God, what is happening to me?”  
She opened the door and waited for the dog to follow her down the stairs. Guess he’d recognised her as his leader. Smart dog.


	3. Good, likable people

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amy takes Buddy to meet her parents. Later, she has drinks with Dan.

Buddy came to visit for the weekend. Her family liked him, Sophie didn’t hit on him. She envied Buddy a bit, because she was sure that if she wasn’t her parents’ daughter, they wouldn’t find her likable at all. Likable people are a huge mystery to her- how someone is able to put up with people as intruding as her parents and on top of it get them to like them. Oh, Amy, her mom said. How come every boy you bring home isn't like him?  
Well, I don't know, Mom, maybe it's because he's so damn likable he's starting to get on my nerves. At least he can do all the talking for me, she thought. He entertained her parents with stories about Carson City, defended her from Sophie when she was talking about Amy's disastrous love life before him, and surpringly knew a lot about prunes. Buddy and her mother both seemed really excited about prunes. You have a wonderful daughter there, Ms Brookheimer.  
"Yeah, and also Amy!", Sophie said.  
"Shut the fuck up, Soph.", Amy said. Her mom told her to watch her words. She's always been a bit of a potty mouth, she told Buddy.  
"I think it's charming.", he said.  
"Buddy, you are too kind. Do you have someone we could introduce Sophie to?"  
"You want another grandchild out of wedlock, really?", Amy said.  
The kids looked up from their plates. "Didn't mean you.", she whispered. "I meant the ones she didn't keep..."  
"Amy, please stop."  
Her mother was doing the uneasy eyebrow thing. That was the thing she did just before she told people she had no idea who Amy was.  
"Or...", Amy continued, "she could try and sleep with Buddy himself. Careful, Buddy- if you feel something stuck in your clothes and can't get it off, it's Sophie."  
"Wow, you are so bitter, Ames. And kind of drunk. All the time. Is that your occupation now that your life is over?", Sophie laughed, then whispered, "See, Buddy, she's mad cause I slept with her ex-boyfriend like a century after they broke up."  
Amy's parents were already trying to bring back the subject of prunes, but Buddy stopped them:  
"Cammon, guys, sisters fight. I get it. That's just how you show affection. Amy says you are sexually promiscuous, you get back at her... That's just what sisters do."  
"You're totally right, Buddy. When you guys break up, give me a call."

"Why are you so jealous of me? Just because I didn't get knocked up in high school? They gave us free condoms for a reason, Sophie!"  
Amy hears a cry. It's Sophie's oldest kid.  
"Oh, that's great. Now he knows his mother had sex!"  
"I bet he knew way more than that."  
"Also, like you had sex in high school. Little family nerd."  
"Okay, for your information, I did have sex in high school, and that didn't stop me from getting a job in the fucking White House, so there's that!"  
"I don't know why you're so mad at me, Ames. It's just sisterly banter."  
"Sure."  
"If you ask me, I was doing you a favour embarrassing you in front of that deflated cactus you brought home."  
"Aham."  
"If you're still mad about my sleeping with Dan, you have clearly not moved on."  
That's it. That is when Amy loses it.  
"I AM NOT MAD ABOUT THAT!", she screams; half dropping, half throwing a plate on the ground. She looked at Sophie, and her mocking expression gradually became a little too... friendly for Amy's taste. Sophie was the one who picked up the pieces and threw them out. For a quiet moment there was only the mechanic of that self-conscious movement.  
"I'm not mad about that, Sophie.", Amy said, recomposing herself. "I just don't want Buddy to get the wrong impressions... about me, about this family. So, if you'd just stop telling embarrassing stories to whomever wants to listen, that'd be great." Sophie had sat down at the kitchen table. Her expression was no longer pitiful, but she still had a smug look on her face, as if she knew Amy better than she knew herself. Sophie did that all the fucking time when they were kids.  
"I'm sorry I said your boyfriend was a deflated cactus. I'm sure he is able to rise to the occasion.", she finally said.  
"What are you doing, Sophie?", Amy asked.  
"I'm being nice to you?"  
"Yeah, cut it out."  
"Oh, I'm sorry if I'm trying to make you feel better by pretending I didn't see the tantrum you just threw.", she was being calm now. She spoke softly, masking her shrew voice with a mocking tone, as if to make Amy feel even worse about her angry screaming.  
Amy grabbed Sophie and looked at her straight in the eye.  
"Don't you pretend to be nice to me, you chaotic neutral piece of shit."  
"Geez, Amy. You're the least interesting sociopath I've ever met."

"A sociopath, nonetheless.", Amy said, pointing her fingers at Sophie as if threatening her. But Sophie didn't look threatened.

 

Amy just wanted to break more china. Expensive china. Buddy had driven her home and then gone to the airport. In the car he seemed disaprooving of the way she treated her family. He hadn't said anything, but she could just sense the "you could be nicer to your parents" look. The "I know Sophie is a cunt but she's also your sister". And, specially, the "Besides, you also are kind of a cunt" look. She was positive the only reason Buddy didn't say it because he couldn't express that idea without saying "the C word". "Shit" was just too derivative.  
"When did my life become about having Wednesday dinners with my parents?", she asked Dan. "I need a new job so I can turn them down."  
They were sharing a bottle of- well, at that stage, she could only say it was alcohol in some of its holy forms- and watching the talking heads at CBS on the bar TV.  
"I can get you a job there, if you want."  
"No, I don't want a job at fucking CBS. CVS, maybe."  
"Right, cause I misheard that and had to fuck your sister. If you need to know, you are better than her at it. She tries a little too hard."  
"That is the most disgusting thing I have heard in my entire life. And I have received an explicit offer from Congressman Furlong to stroke his Florida. What does that ever mean? Florida might look like a dick if you squint but it's not like, in your face."  
"Where are its balls? Oh, right, Furlong doesn't have balls."  
"I'm only laughing at this because I'm drunk, by the way."  
"Maybe Furlong just asked himself which state looked more like a dick. That's how he got to Florida, cause it's a poking stick"  
"Okay, now that is the grossest thing I have ever heard. Furlong's poking stick. Hey, Dan, if he offered you a position as, I don't know, Secretary of State, would you let him poke your stick?"  
"Amy, I may be a whore, but I'm a high-end whore, okay? I would find another way to fuck him over."  
"Sure. All right. Fuck, Marry, Kill: Richard, Furlong, Mike."  
"Fuck you."  
"Not an option."  
"Liar", said Dan. "Kill Furlong..."  
"Marry Richard, fuck Mike?"  
"Yeah."  
"Yeah. Richard would make a good wife."  
"Would end up killing him too. He'd thank me for it."  
"Mr. Egan, I just wanted to say, thank you for giving me the opportunity to say goodbye.", Amy made a Richard impression. "Means a lot to me."  
Dan smirked, and then adjusted himself in his chair. That was his preferred position for political scheming. "So listen...", he said. Amy rolled her eyes.  
"I've been in contact with the Montez administration..."  
"Of course..."  
"I think we can be back at the White House in four, maybe five months."  
"We? I'm not gonna betray Selina like that."  
"Amy, listen to me. Selina is done for. She is over. She is worse off than Dilma Roussef."  
"Who?"  
"Exactly."  
"Okay, Dan, Montez is a Republican. And she wants to build a wall to ban her own people from entering this country."  
"Hey, her people are the American people! Also, that was O'Brien."  
"Did you fuck her? Are you the world's most powerful gigolo now? Cause, let me tell you, that is way higher in the hirarchy than the position you had before. Dan Egan, 1st BoyToy. Oh my God, you're Ray!"  
"I didn't fuck her, Amy!"  
"Well, you must've tried to."  
"I can't find my way in with something so small."  
"Oh my God", Amy spilled her drink.  
"I mean, I need a sure way to get in."  
"Right, because if you fuck her she won't even know you're there."  
"Yeah yeah, very funny, Amy, how is old Woody's dick? Oh right, he can't have sex cause he never learned how to take off that belt buckle. Also, he's a doll, so he doesn't have a dick."  
"Smart. All I got from that is that you used to undress dolls as a child."  
"Of course I did. What else would I do with it?"  
"Sociopath", Amy mouthed.  
"You know, have you ever thought of having Woody run for senator? People would vote for him, he's got something non threatening about his face."  
"Sure, I'm gonna make my life about my boyfriend."  
"No, idiot, you get to control what he does. He's just more likable than you."  
"Thanks, Dan."  
"Oh, please. You're a bitch and you can't smile. Personally, I find these to be your best qualities, but America won't vote for you."  
"I don't want America to vote for me."  
"Then what do you want, Amy? Cause I'm giving you plenty of options, here! Looks like you want to give up."  
"So what? What do you care?"  
"Because you are being wasted."  
"Nothing new for me."  
"Damn it, Amy, I can't do this without you!"  
"Do what, Dan?"  
"Get back in the White House."  
"Yeah, you can. It's not hard; Gary was there."  
"What are you gonna do with your life, Amy? Marry Woody and acquire a southern accent?"  
"It's just... I'm tired. I'm tired of being so much better than everyone and no one noticing. Maybe I should just try... being a good person?"  
"Amy, that is the stupidest thing I have ever heard come out of your mouth. You're better than everyone and no one gives you credit for that? Use that to your advantage. Bring in the high-end bitch. And then throw the people who said shit about you in jail and let them rape each other"  
Amy was going to yell at him, but that was just what she needed to hear.  
"Thank you, Dan. That was actually... Thank you."  



	4. If only we could begin again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a bit of meta about Amy and Dan; Amy's POV. We find out more about the three dates.

It took a while to convince Buddy to run. It’s not like he had dreamed about it all his life- but then again, neither had he dreamed about becoming…Whatever it was that he did in Nevada. Secretary of something? Well, it wasn’t important. They would make him senator- if they could elect Jonad Ryan, then getting Buddy to win should be child’s play.  
She wouldn’t admit it under torture, but Amy actually enjoyed working with Dan. They made a good team, in a bizarre way. Suddenly she found herself getting nostalgic over their morning carpools to Sidney Purcell’s office. He always brought her coffee- when it comes to Dan Egan, this was the nicest gesture you could get.  
Everyone thought Amy had quit Selina’s office a while ago because they’d fired Dan; even Dan had teased her about it when he heard she’d left. You couldn’t do a month without me, could you? Obviously he was aware that he hadn’t been the reason for her office breakdown. It was Selina and Mike and Karen, the awful woman Karen who never compromised herself. But Dan was the first person she thought of once her head cleared out. He’d been the first person she called. She didn’t know why. Maybe it is that Dan, out of all people, who knew exactly what she was going through. Amy never had to explain herself to him. It’s so very strange, though, isn’t it, that at that moment she sought comfort in Dan Egan; the least comforting person in the world. And he provided her with just that. He told her he could get her a job in lobbying. Then he heard her complain for hours and hours and joined in; even.  
Hardly-ever, but still somewhere in ever, Amy wished she could hold him, and be held by him. This was when she was distraught and depressed and feeling like a failure. It’s a stupid fantasy; it’s not even a fantasy. It’s just this urge you get to have someone hold you when you’re out of balance, and you fall. You fall, and you melt away. And the reason Dan was there was because he was that who knew why she had fallen. He knew her too well. If only she didn’t know him as well as he knew her…  
But, well, been there, done that. She had loved him- now, she knew. Perhaps due to the snowstorm of negative emotions that came to her every day, she had grown more aware of nice things, for she missed them. Amy missed the innocence of not yet having grown cold to horrible things; the world of horrible things is so big compared to the rest.  
She never talked to him about it; the whole relationship thing. They’d reached a silent agreement never to mention the past ever again. It was too messed up. For a whole year they had seen each other even though Dan still whored himself out to a congresswoman, and so they never went out as in, you know, out. Three dates.  
One had been at a McDonald’s; she had actually been okay with that. She liked eating, and no matter what you ordered at McDonald’s you’d get something substantial. Two had been at Dan’s stepmother’s wedding. Three had been at this random bar in Baltimore. Amy was hired by Selina and Dan got envious of her job. She told him maybe he could try using his brain once in a while to get a job, that maybe he’d see it works. Or not. Then they broke up. But there was nothing else to talk about beyond that; it was just another case of people who cared more about power than each other. At least with Dan they both wanted power; she tended to attract some pushovers. Perhaps she didn’t deserve to be happy. She wasn’t a very good person. She was better than Dan, but that doesn’t take much. Still, Amy wanted to be better now. She wanted to make sure her principles were in check. She wanted to fight for whatever the good people fight for. Amy’s problem, nevertheless, had always been that her will to fight was much greater than her ideological beliefs.


	5. Pros and Cons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Buddy's election results are in, Amy is unpleasantly surprised

He won. They actually got him to win- well, maybe Buddy deserved some of the credit. He hadn't commited any mortal offense, or spread false rumors about his opponents, or wore a hedious hat. He'd been a proper gentleman throughout the campaign, which was so successful that Amy wondered if Selina was the only person she could never get elected. Seriously, give me a fucking starfish and it'll make senator one day, she told Dan after the results were in. Dan took it as proof that Amy just like everybody else thought he lacked charisma.  
"So, your good work is done here", Dan said, "When are you gonna dump him?"  
"Shut up, Dan", Amy whispered as Buddy approached them, asking to see her privately.  
When they went into his office, Buddy opened up a bottle of champagne.  
"Oh, crap, I forgot the glasses"  
"That's fine", she said, already taking a sip from the bottle. It was a good moment, that one, the buzz of alcohol made her feel so calm, like the world was hers. And then she realized what was happening.  
Buddy was going on and on about how amazing she was and how she'd changed his life, which made her have to fight a reflux. He gave her a bouquet of roses (how original) and said that,if only she would let him, he would make her the happiest she'd ever been. Well, that's pretty generic, isn't it?  
"We don't have to move from DC. This is who you are, and I love you. I could never do this to you. I just want you to have something closer to a normal, healthy life. Here. With me. We could be happy, Amy. We are happy, aren't we?"  
Amy was making lists on her brain:  
MARRYING BUDDY  
Pros  
-Pleasant enough home life  
-I get to be First Lady of whatever chair he takes  
-We could be an established political sector with power  
Cons  
-I don't really want to be First Lady, I will not be defined by a marriage  
-Buddy could be really, really sappy  
-I feel sort of inappropriate with him, even if he finds me and my cursing charming  
She was calm with him, he made her calm, yes, but sometimes she felt it was because of the numbness she'd been suffering from ever since Selina lost. She was still anxious, but quieter. She felt bad vocalizing her complaints to him. He was always so understanding, she got frustrated. It was almost as if he was amused by her, like one would be at the circus.  
But this was all dwelling into the drifts, and she was trying to be practical here. Politically, there was no way of calling which was best for her; it was a coin toss. It was hard for Amy, then, not to have politics as the defining criteria in her decisions.  
"Buddy, you're a great guy. You're smart, and you're funny, and I have a great time with you."  
"There's a but there somewhere, isn't there?"  
"I think so, yeah", her voice cracked, "I wish there wasn't, I... I wish I were the sort of person you deserve. You deserve much better than me, Buddy. Someone who won't yawn during your stories."  
Buddy hugged her and said: "For a moment there I really thought you'd say yes"  
"I know", she said, "Me too"


	6. Moment of Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> aftermath of the proposal

"So, did you say yes?", Dan asked her as she came back to the office to get her coat.   
"What? How do you even...?"  
"You look like you just shot a pidgeon."  
"Well, thank you, but I'll be going now."  
"Wait, Amy, you're not gonna marry him, are you?"   
"That's none of your fucking business."  
"I knew you'd dump him. Actually, for a moment I thought he was gonna dump you, taking into account how much you were yelling at all of us."  
"Yelling got him elected. These people need to be tased every 10 minutes to be reminded of their work. Too bad that's not legal."  
She started to walk away.   
"Ames, don't you wanna go contemplate the failure of your relationship and go get drunk?"  
"You're loving this, aren't you?"  
"Yes, seeing you miserable is one of my few pleasures in life."  
"Good night, Dan."  
-  
Amy got herself some coffee to-go and was sitting on a bench facing the White House. She wanted to go over there and draw a dick in red and blue spray or something like that. Fucking Montez. Maybe she could still hire me- no, bad thought. Bad Amy. Drawing the dick sounded like a better idea.   
Suddenly, her phone buzzed on her pocket and reminded her that she had a life and a family and they wouldn't let her die sitting there, staring at the White House. It was Sophie- ok, maybe she would. Sophie wanted to know about some wi-fi password. She asked about Buddy and Amy told her what happened- it was best to have it out quickly. All her sister did as a response was let out an "Oh.". Then they both hung up.   
Soon, her mother was calling. She didn't answer. Her father. An unidentified number. Sophie again.   
For fuck's sake, leave me alone.   
The dream of the White House hadn't been all that. She'd actually felt terrible the entire time- why had she dreamed of it anyway? Why was she still dreaming of it, even after it came true? Amy hates the truth. Things are way better in her mind, always.   
-  
Dan came to see her the next day, using some lame excuse. Still, he brought her yogurt, so she let him in. The dog, Jonah Ryan, had taken a liking to him.   
"Cheer up", Dan said, "He wasn't all that. Now, on to phase two..."  
"Phase two? No!"  
During the past weeks Dan had developed a plan to make money by spying on the Montez administration and reporting back to Selina, so that Amy didn't feel like she was betraying her. Why Dan was so obsessed with the new regime did not puzzle her, but it made her somwhat uncomfortable nonetheless.   
"You know, Montez has a daughter."  
"What, are you fuck her? Is that your big plan? Because, let me tell you, you're not all that."  
"Hey! There's way more to my plan than fucking whatsherface Montez. I was thinking..."  
"Dan, stop. Just...please stop."  
She was feeling nauseous.   
"Are you alright?"  
She had a bad case of the flu. The next days, she spent laying in her childhood bed, being spoon-fed soup by her mother.   
"Why is this necessary?"  
"Hey, a mother hardly ever gets to do it after her kids grow up."  
"You have grandkids!"  
"They bite! Sophie, she just doesn't teach her kids."

Sophie dropped by at night. She'd brought Amy her favourite chocolates, which made her suspicious.   
"Is there poison in one of them? Did one of your kids vomit in a filling?"  
"Amy, have some faith in me. I don't see any of your DC friends taking care of you."  
"No one has friends in DC. We have connections."  
Amy glanced at the TV. They were showing Buddy's plead cerimony to whatever he'd been elected to do.   
"I should've married him. Don't know why I didn't. Wouldn't have sat in the open wind; wouldn't be here right now."  
"Amy, look at me. No, not the television. Look at me- I've lost my patience with you. You wanna know why you didn't marry him? Because you're in love with Dan. You have always been in love with him. Now, either do something about it or move on."  
"I'm not in love with Dan. No one who actually knows Dan loves him. Ask his mom, she told me he destroyed her vagina with his head."  
"Yeah, all babies do that."  
"Wow. Definitely not having kids."  
"Amy, look, I know I can be a bitch, but I'm saying this for your own good- you've been in this thing with him for way too long. Talk to him."  
"Right! Even if I did have feelings for him, I'd still be aware that he's incapable of feelings, so that would never work out."  
"You know what, sis? One day, when you and Dan are gross old people with high positions in the governent and spheres of influence, you're both going to realise you should've tried harder."  
"Okay, first- why are you so invested in this? Oh, right, your scheme of ruining my life. But, most importantly, when did you learn the word sphere?"  
"Whatever, Amy", Sophie said, taking the chocolates away.   
"No, cammon! You can't do that! Sophie!"  
But she came back with a bottle of wine. What a nice sister she was. 

As soon as the wine entered her system, Amy felt warm and fuzzy and she even let the dog jump on her bed. She lost count of how many glasses she'd had- soon enough, the warm and fuzzy feeling was replaced by some violent angst; partly because she was very cold, partly because she felt claustrophobic under the blankets, and partly because- well, Sophie was actually right.   
"About what?", Sophie asked exasperatedly, for by then she'd forgotten about Dan Egan in order to focus on a bad episode of Mike and Molly.   
"Don't make me say it!"  
"Oh."  
Amy was crying way too much; that couldn't be normal. Could it be that she had spent so long without crying that she had a full storage of tears? Or did they want to take vengeance on her?   
"I can't believe I'm crying over a boy"  
"Don't be hard on yourself; you're drunk. Also, you have a lot to cry about."  
"Sophie, why me- why do the shittiest things always happen to me? Why can't they happen to, like, Maddox? I hate Maddox. I hate Dan, too. I'm not some stupid bimbo or idk female Voldemort. He's a shit. I know him. He uses people, and he doesn't like anyone, and he's a fucking sociopathic pile of shit who cannot be trusted but with more and more shit. He's the worst and I hate that I love him. I don't want to love him, Sophie. Why can't I like nice people? Why are nice people all stupid? God, I love him. What the fuck, God? I hate this. I hate this so much. I want to barf, but I don't know if it's because of how much I hate him, or because of how sick I am."  
So Sophie held Amy's hair while she vomitted. That night, Amy got very dehydrated, and Sophie got drunk while she was on call. 

-  
She had made up her mind now. She was going to end this... connection-ship of theirs. Amy waited for him in the bar, as an air of dreadfulness befell her. Don't be pathetic, she whispered to her thoughts. He can't see through you.   
But that's useless, Amy thought. He always sees through you.


	7. Things we said that day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amy tells Dan they're not friends- but it doesn't go as smoothly as she plans

Amy took a sip of scotch, neat, before she approached him. She had that serious, wide-eyed look she had when she was both nervous and mad and could not decide which of these she was more. Sit down, she told Dan. It was very bossy- still, it was intended to be bossy. This was business. Everything is business- and politics, obviously. But business is politics anyway.  
“After you”, Dan said, pulling her a chair. Amy did not want to let him win, so she just made a turn and sat on the other side on another chair, which made Dan look like an idiot with an empty chair, and forced him to sit on the chair he had so smugly pulled out.  
“You know, Ames, pettiness is an underrated quality in our society.”  
“I agree.”  
Amy coughed. She knew Dan knew the absence of a proper comeback meant a solemn subject. Or maybe she just thought Dan knew. She was projecting. It’s very easy to be in love with someone if you keep projecting your own feelings on them. Yeah, maybe she wasn’t in love with Dan; she was just in love with herself.  
“So, what major shit just happened that made you too serious to bitch back at me?”  
You. You did.  
“Nothing happened, Dan.”  
“Oh, so you just asked me out because you want to talk to me? I’m flattered, Ames. I didn’t know you liked me like that.”  
“God, just shut the fuck up. For one second. Why can’t you just shut the fuck up?”  
That last part, she yelled. Some heads on neighbouring tables raised perplexed from their dull meals. Dan seemed to realize the subject really was serious.  
“What happened, Amy? Did your dad have another heart attack? Are you pregnant with Woody’s child? No, you wouldn’t be drinking… Well, I mean, you wouldn’t keep the kid. Would you? Well, even so, my mom drank plenty when she was pregnant with me and I turned out better than all previous generations of my family’s sober wombs, so…”  
“That explains so much.”  
“I knew you couldn’t resist that one- practically laid it out for you. Now, say something.”  
“Ok. I’m going to be an adult about this. I think it’s best we don’t see each other anymore, Dan.”  
“Right. Very possible in the tight political circles of DC.”  
“We are not going to be in a political circle together- you go to your circle, I’ll go to mine. Selina’s not president anymore, Dan. Selina’s not anything. And, as long as we keep hanging on to that, we’re never gonna do anything worthwhile again.”  
“I’m not hanging on to Selina, you are.”  
“Dan, we are not a team! We never were a team, never will be. You understand me? I do my thing, you do yours, no suicide pacts and no two-person plan with a hundred phases. I’m not gonna get sucked into your evil plan to destroy the world, okay? So, goodbye, Dan. I think we’ve both gotten the most- or, should I say, the least- of this relationship. I hope you have a good life and die a sudden death.”  
And, taking her coat, Amy started making her way out of the room.  
“Are you not even gonna pay?”, Dan yelled at her. “Well, that’s fucking rude.”  
Amy was walking fast, but Dan caught up with her- she suspected he had not paid the bill. He touched her arm and she hit him with her purse.  
“Amy! This is ridiculous! Why are you so pissed at me?”  
“Do I need a reason to be pissed at you? Your entire personality is the reason!”  
“Oh for fuck’s sake”  
Now Dan was angry, and she stopped for a moment.  
“You want to know why we work well together? Because we both want to win. It’s not fucking teamwork, it’s a competition that weirdly turns into success for both of us. And when we compete against other people, together, it’s even greater. It’s like we could crush every single fucker like the fucking Avengers- except we’re not avenging anything, we’re just merciless. We could be great, you know? You need me, Amy- otherwise, you’re just gonna get bored and settle for a life of some environmental-friendly congresswoman’s chief-of-staff married to a bland guy who’s extremely more successful than you.”  
“Oh, so my success is on you?”  
“I didn’t say that.”  
“You would be nowhere if it weren’t for me. You used me to get connections and I was too stupid to realize it. I called you back into Selina’s office and then I took you out of being Tom James’ Gary! You keep using me and using me and I’m so fucking stupid! And it’s not even like we had a relationship. I did this in exchange for… what? I was even more of an idiot than these bimbos…”  
Dan was quiet for a moment, then he gulped. He was staring at her ripping through her eyes, so she looked down.  
“Amy”, he said very softly now, “You do know you are different from… you know?”  
“Oh, that’s sooo comforting! Dan, I don’t give a fuck about how different I am, and I feel sorry from all these you knows much more than I feel sorry for myself. I don’t need you to tell me I’m better and I certainly don’t care what you think.”  
“Amy”  
“Yeah, I’m done, ok?”  
“Amy”  
She took a deep breath: “What?”  
“You’re different.”  
“You said that already.”  
“I know. What else do you want me to say?!”  
“Nothing! I don’t want you to say anything anymore ever again!”  
“I love you”  
Dan looked surprised at himself when he said that. He was weary and he spoke in a very low voice as his eyes looked upwards as not to take responsibility for his words.  
Amy’s answer also came in a whisper:  
“Fuck you, Dan.”  
And so she walked and she walked and she heard no footsteps behind her. God, how she wanted to break down and fall. But she just kept walking until she found a Starbucks. She needed coffee and she was starving and a little tipsy- besides, she didn’t quite know what to do with herself right now.


	8. As time goes by

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A year has passed, but it's DC and eventually Dan and Amy are going to meet

A year or so has passed. Dan Egan, conveniently engaged to the first daughter, whatsherface Montez, has managed to delay the process of picking out a date for their wedding until at least there is a sense of Montez’ approval rates. There’s no way he was going to tie his saddle to a dying horse. If it became clear that Montez would get a second term, then he would start picking daisies. For now, it was enough to be on her advisory board. He had all the power and none of the compromise.   
Amy Brookheimer, meanwhile, has found an activity more adjusted to her temperament- or, at least, something which her temperament would, one way or the order, adjust. Aware of every slip in the Montez’ administration, she and Selina had devised a plan which, on top of getting the Meyer image back on track, actually helped the world by denouncing its unreported ailments.   
Selina, now a prominent figure in the UN, fighting for human rights in the USA and beyond- the sky is the limit, really- has managed to cultivate a pacifist persona who went on meeting about the most respectable subjects, such as global warming (which Montez was often hesitant to comment on) and Tibet’s newfound freedom, which the government of China had- after some brief negotiations- attributed to her efforts as president. Long story short, Selina had all the reputation now, and none of the power to destroy it.   
But that’s not the only benefit for Amy here- after all; she was tired of being a publicist: Amy got to decide which causes were worth Selina’s valuable saliva and sometimes even to address the UN herself- you know, when the press wasn’t there and things were actually getting done.   
The job was far less stressful and depressing than life at the White House. Not fifteen months after her humiliating loss, Selina made the cover of Time as the up-and-coming politician of the moment- which, obviously, was a bit ironic. Montez, meanwhile, was sinking and sinking… She couldn’t help but think of Dan with certain disdain, coldly calculating just when he was going to decide to leave the boat. Although, maybe he wouldn’t have to- the party was struggling to decide whether their next candidate should be Chung or Tom James, and it seemed like both carried the potential for catastrophe- now that they were scrutinized constantly by the public eye.   
“It’s actually pretty funny, isn’t it, when it’s not you who’s being thrown under the bus simultaneously in every possible way known to mankind?”  
“Oh, God!”, said Gary, “Who did Chung’s hair? They overblew it and now it doesn’t move at all! What a disaster!”  
“He does look overblown”, said Mike. "All those kissassing fuckers..."  
“When I served as a soldier for my country…”, Chung was saying. Amy muted it and started dubbing it:  
“I love war, even though I spent like five minutes there. Then my friend died. It was sad. The memory still haunts me, despite my talking about it every five minutes. They say if I talk about it enough, it might just go away. They say I could forget about death. So I talk about my dead friend and use his memory to gain voters and as a way to recover my mental sanity! Talk about two birds with one stone….My friend…was killed by a stone.”  
“Do you think his friend even died?”, Selina asked, “or is it just some model they hired and sent off to like the Cayman islands with a lifetime salary?”  
“It’s a possibility”, Amy said.   
Later that night, Selina and her team were supposed to attend an event for diplomats at the White House. It was not uncommon for them to go to these things- and, though Selina and Montez were always cordial and affable with one another, they would hardly exchange any words after the mandatory greetings.   
Amy wasn’t really worried about meeting Dan there- it had been known to happen. At first, she’d been pathetically nervous about how to act, but as the political business kept flourishing during the function, she’d had but little time to focus on things that weren’t work-related. Oh, yes- Amy Brookheimer, workaholic with a purpose, was back at full force. Of course, she did see Dan, and she thought she caught his eye at one point, but it was hardly the end of the world. Amy was so happy now, that she wasn’t acting like a fucking schoolgirl and had her life together again.   
Besides, she had the upper-hand on the Dan situation- not only was he now forever humiliated for not being reciprocated in his first manifestation of feeling ever, but he was now also engaged to a pageant girl with a plastic face and a tiny head with a tiny brain. Maybe karma really was a thing.   
Tonight, however, tonight something was different. Upon the innocent venture of getting herself some punch in a room adjacent to the ball room, she found herself in the all too familiar situation of having been trapped by Dan Egan.   
He almost managed to startle her- had he approached anyone else the way he approached her, they would have dropped the punch and screamed. But Amy knew all too well how his breathing sounded. She couldn’t explain. It’s a Dan thing. He breathes a different way.   
“Hello, Ames.”, he said. “Long time no see.”  
“Oh, Dan. Back at the White House- no matter how hard you try to clean up horseshit, it just sticks to the marble floors, doesn’t it?”  
“Whatever you need to say to make yourself feel better.”  
Amy got really mad really fast- she hadn’t spoken to Dan in so long, even his minor provocations were getting under her skin.   
“What do you want?”, she asked. She wasn’t interested in prolonging that conversation.   
“I might have some information that would be of use to you. Of course, I can’t say anything more about it here…”  
“No, sir, I am not getting into your van. My mom tells me I can’t.”  
“Whatever, your loss. I win either way.”  
“Okay, Dan, fill me in.”  
“You know that Chinese restaurant all DC politicians go to when they’re up to something? There’s a restaurant across the street from that one- obviously it’s pathetic to think those fucking morons would keep anything a secret all the while eating at the same place. But the restaurant next to it is pretty good. It’s in an attic, so you get a good panorama…”  
“Okay, whatever, I don’t care about the fucking panorama, just tell me when so I can leave this room!”  
“Sunday morning, about 9?”  
“Alright.”

Amy didn’t tell anyone about this strange development- not until she was sure it would actually amount to anything, or if it was just a way for Dan to get under her nerves.   
But it turns out Dan actually had something going for him. When she got there he was already seated and eating pancakes, and he smirked when he spotted her. Amy might’ve smirked back a little.   
“Good morning, Ames! I ordered you coffee and some yogurt.”  
“No pancakes?”  
“You hate breakfast food.”  
“Oh, yes, I do.”, she said, settling down. “So, Dan- why are you so eager to turn against your new mommy? Have you even given her a chance?”  
“Montez is a clueless imbecile. She’s drowning the country.”  
“What do you care? As long as it keeps you in power.”  
“I have other plans for my future.”  
“Of course you do. Who’s gonna break the news to Kayla?”  
“The press, probably. I should hope so- they should be extremely rude not to say anything. After all, she is the first daughter.”  
“You said you had something that may interest me.”  
Dan got into his scheming position and whispered:  
“I think there’s a way to impeach Montez and call for general elections again. The same elections. There’s proof it’s been meddled with. I don’t know if Montez did it herself or if it came from our side, but it’s a fucking shit-show just looking for a scapegoat.”  
“Okay. What’s in it for you?”  
“I give you this, and Selina gives me complete veto power over her decisions once she’s back at the White House.”  
“Veto power. You’re very funny, Dan.”  
“You know what the problem with the Meyer administration? President Meyer. If I can stop her from making stupid decisions, we can actually get back on track. Maybe she won’t be making any decisions at all anymore.”  
“So, basically, you’d be president.”  
“This is a democracy, Amy. Even if I actually were to take on this function, I wouldn’t be a tyrant. The constitution wouldn't let me. Plus, it’s only veto power.”  
“Only veto power? As in, you do not make decisions for her; you just shoot down her stupid decisions? Hum….”, she smiled, “No.”  
“Okay. I’m fine either way.”  
“No, you’re not. You’re fine now. To throw that away on a bet is too high a risk to run… Unless you’re sure Selina would get reinstated which means that you know how to manipulate the election…Which means the first election perhaps wasn’t manipulated at all…Or you’re just tired of being a high-profile whore… Or maybe you’re just bored out of your mind and are looking for some self-destructive game... Though it could be you just want the omnipotence. ”  
“Do you need time to work that out or are you going to accept this history shifting offer?”  
“You know what I think it is? I think Montez doesn’t like you. She can see you’re just an ass-kissing power-hungry shitbag.”  
“Oh, Amy, only you could define me so poetically.”  
There was a moment of controlled pause. Amy smirked at him. “Let’s see what you got.”  
“Glad to be on your team again.”, Dan replied in a smug tone. Amy wanted to drink to that, but it was morning- so, she just had to come to terms with the reality of that statement.


	9. Power balance

“Amy Brookheimer, as I live and breathe!”, said the voice of Jonah Ryan. “Selina couldn’t call? Thinks she’s too important to talk to me? Well you can tell her that I’m a congressman and she’s just an ex-president…”  
“I will tell her no such thing. Should I remind you that I am the only reason you even are a congressman? So, you will do what I say or I will finish you.”, Amy said.   
“Very intense- classic Brookheimer. I assume this is about Montez impeachment lawsuit?”  
“Which you will vote for.”  
“What’s in it for me?”  
“You get to keep your dick.”  
“That’s in your best interested, hum, Amy?”  
Amy hung up on him. According to her predictions, they would have majority in Congress and get the lawsuit passed. But Amy needed to be very careful; Selina’s position up until then had been the vaguest possible. She’d given an interview the other day and the anchor bombarded her with questions.   
“What do you think of the recent accusations that president Montez and ex-presidential candidate O’Brian manipulated the election results?”  
“Well, I can only say that if O’Brian manipulated the election and still managed not to win, it really wasn’t in the cards for him. Get it? Cards…Because the ballots…”  
“I get it, Ma’am. But on a more serious note- do you think it’s true?”  
“Well, Emma, I went to Yale Law School, as you know, and the first thing we learn there is everybody’s innocent until proven otherwise… Obviously fraud accusations should not be taken lightly- Montez is, after all, the President of the United States, even if that fact is based upon fraud. But I have complete faith that our Congressmen and the American people will make sure that justice prevail, in case president Montez really did commit fraud.”  
“Former president Selina Meyer, everyone.” (Thank you, thank you)  
It had all gone exceptionally well up until then, so much that Amy was afraid to jinx it. Dan, still in Montez’s office, reported back to them in real time. He said he’d sat down with Montez and looked into her eyes and told her Ma’am, if you really did this, you have to tell me. If I don’t know the circumstances, I can’t help you.   
“And then she said ‘I didn’t want to do it! It was O’Brian’s idea!’. What an idiot.”  
“So we got a confession. Great, let’s burry her!”, said Gary, which caused everyone to look at him inappropriately.   
“Was that Gary?”, Dan asked on the speaker phone. “That was cold.”  
“We can’t bury her, Gary. We can’t make this look like a conspiracy.”, Amy said. “Congress voted to investigate, but now it’s up to the FBI. Someone from the inside’s got to break.”  
“Working on it.”  
“Working on what?”, asked Mike.   
“Well, obviously, I can’t tell them.”, said Dan. “Kayla has to tell them.”  
“Kayla?”  
“The daughter I’m boning.”  
“Oh, yeah. Why would she do this to her mother?”  
“Are you kidding me? The woman hates her mother. Plus, she’s such a goody two shoes, always wanting to do the right thing. I had to say so much bullshit to finally fuck her. Pretty much I sacrificed a virgin. Sorry you had to hear that, Ames.”  
“Why would I care? From what you’re saying this is our ticket to the White House. Go fuck her into a testimony.”  
“Okay.”  
Silence.   
“Oh, now?”  
“Yes, Dan.”  
He hung up.   
“You two have a weird relationship.”, Mike said. “Do you really think Dan is that good that he’s going to fuck her into a testimony? I mean, I haven’t read the reviews, spare me from the details.”  
“Ew. No, I just think that from what he described she’s the kind of girl susceptible to, you know, doing anything men tell her to do. But if that doesn’t work, we have a plan B, Mike. If the daughter won’t confess to the FBI, she’ll definitely confess to her priest. And we can always bribe him.”  
“So, when Wendy asks what I did at work today I’m just gonna say the microwave broke.”  
“You mean you broke the microwave.”  
“Oh, well.”

Bribing the priest did not prove necessary. Within a week, leaked footage of the first daughter of the United States throwing her mother under the bus was being played and replayed and replayed again on all major news channels.   
“What an idiot.”, Dan was saying.   
“Okay, but what did you do?”  
“You could never learn, Mike.”  
“What he did was tell her she had to do the right thing because no one was above justice and all that bullshit about this being a great country he pulls every time he writes a speech”, said Amy.   
“Which Mike could never learn to do. It was pretty easy, though. I thought it was gonna be like a morally grey dilemma, but she was ready to destroy her mother. Beware of Catherine, Ma’am.”   
“I’ve always been. So, what’s the next step?”  
“Well, she’s gonna leave, obviously. After that, they’ll either try to recover the missing ballots or just get a confession from someone who saw them. All evidence points to you, Ma’am.”  
Selina let out a crazed smile for a second. “Try to get more information, Dan.”  
As they hung up, they experienced a perfect moment of silence, peaceful silence. Then Gary shouted:  
“SHE’S BACK BITCHES!!!”  
Which had everyone else celebrating, but also looking at Gary like that had been inappropriate.   
While Mike danced with a tie on his forehead, and a drunk Selina let Gary brush her hair a peculiar way, Amy went into her office to take a call.   
“Hello, Egan. You did a good enough job today.”  
“You’re welcome.”  
“This was a really risky bet, Dan.”  
“I know. But for once I’d like to be there for my own merits and have a function.”  
“Plus you knew her boat was going down and wanted to take advantage of it.”  
“Yeah, that too. I’m not an idiot.”  
“No, you are not an idiot. Has Montez slapped you yet?”  
“Haven’t seen her.”  
“When you do, make sure you get a picture.”  
“Hey, Amy?”  
“Yes, Dan?”  
“I couldn’t have done it without you.”  
“Well, that is stating the obvious.”  
She hung up on him. That statement annoyed her- she didn’t need his approval. She had been the one to get the votes from the Congressmen, she had been the one to coach Selina into seeming like a nice human again, it had been her who managed to leak that video to the press, she had been the one to tell Dan to grow a fucking pair and go record Montez saying she’d committed fraud, because the rest of the evidence was pretty circumstantial. But of course everyone would give the credit to Dan, just for being a whore. Of course, if it had been Catherine, she could’ve certainly used sex to convince her to throw her mother under the bus, and she would’ve done it faster and more efficiently. She’d even devised a day-by-day plan of this conspiracy.   
And now that the waters were calmer, she asked herself whether she really needed to keep her deal with Dan. Veto power. That’s ridiculous. What would he say if she didn’t hire him back; that they’d been in cahoots to dethrone Montez? He would come out of this burned. How come Dan didn’t have anything to blackmail them with? Obviously, he wasn’t totally empty handed- he had lots of incriminating evidence from his years of working with Selina, not to mention a couple of morally compromising videos, but none of these could amount to anything as big as an impeachment, especially after how serious Montez’s crimes had been. Next to them, a little lobbying and some light hints of bribery would be footnotes on a newspaper. As for the videos (mostly of Selina cursing the backbone of America that were the farmers and hillbillies, and one of Selina making out with Tom James), they would do no more than hurt her reputation which, for a president on her second term, needn’t be given a fuck to.   
Selina Meyer, the returned, the comeback kid, was celebrated now more than ever- due to her now being a martyr for democracy, and partially because of the work she’d been in the UN fighting for good causes, her approval ratings were higher than ever. Politics is about symbolical balance, and no one could avoid associating any bad criticism of Meyer’s with the conspiracy against her, thus equating any information with conspiracy, even when given proof. Selina’s power was symbolical, so much that she could act as if she had way more than, physically, could ever be granted to her. See, power and money are very much alike- they’re both kept on the bank, but the numbers on your account are simply an illusion. The bank is trading in your money and hoping you’ll be wise enough not to spend it all. But Selina had way too much power, and way too much money, too. Maybe a veto wouldn’t be such a bad idea.   
So, Dan probably knew that his blackmail material was not strong enough to measure up to what he was asking for; he wasn’t stupid- he was an idiot, but he wasn’t stupid. Could it be that he actually thought that Amy would keep her promise? But they were the kind of people who lied all the time.   
Not to each other, though. What? Of course they lied to each other. Like that time when Amy got him to have a heart episode and abandoned him in London with fucking Jonah Ryan, all because she wanted to steal his job. Well, not steal. The job was meant to be hers. God, this example was only making her feel guilty. But obviously Dan had lied to her, when they were dating, a long, long time ago. And then before he was hired by Selina, when they “accidentally” met after years and caught up and had sex. Of course, Amy was already working for Selina, then. He hadn’t even been subtle about it. Don’t you have a job for me?, he’d said.   
She walked out as soon as he said that. He said something about this not being just about Selina Meyer. Yeah, Dan, sure. Fucker.   
He wasn’t gonna get this job. If he thought there was honour among thieves, then he shouldn’t have stolen from her.   
Oh, and surely there was that time when he told her he loved her in an attempt to get her to conspire with him. Never in her life had she been angrier than she was then. Where had that anger gone when she first agreed to meet up with him? Never mind- it was back now. 

Not one minute after they had settled into the White House again, Dan burst into her office looking very red.   
“What the fuck, Amy? I thought we had a deal!”  
“Yeah, you thought we had a deal.”  
“I hand you the fucking presidency and this is how you repay me?”  
“Oh, please. Be happy you get to keep your job on Selina’s team. You did nothing but speed up the process of Montez’s inevitable failure. If you hadn’t noticed it, someone else would’ve.”  
“Well, that’s not what everyone else thinks.”  
“Dan, let me put this clearly to you- if it hadn’t been for me, you would have sat on all this valuable information that you had because you’re too much of a chicken to have acted upon it on your own. You had no hard proof, and you had no consistent plan. Everything you did, I could’ve done better. Actually, you only did one thing, which was fuck the daughter. Which I could’ve done better as well.”  
“Yeah, I don’t think so.”  
“I could’ve fucked her, Dan!”  
“So you would have fucked her. I thought you had dignity…”  
“I said I could’ve done it better than you, not that I would do it…”  
“If it had been Catherine, would you have done it?”  
“Catherine is on our side!”  
“Hence the second conditional!”  
“This is a very unproductive discussion, guys.”, said Mike, who had been talking with Amy before Dan entered the room. Now, he was eating a pickle.   
“Shut up, Mike”, Dan and Amy screamed.   
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m thoroughly entertained, but still… You didn’t even make Amy sign anything, Dan? That’s some amateur shit!”  
“You know what? I don’t need a title. Selina better be damn aware that I own her ass, or I’m going to denounce her for conspiracy. If I showed Montez the way out I can easily show her out, too. Or maybe she’d have some sense, as to give me a say on this administration, if not for gratitude, for my indispensable brains!”, Dan yelled amidst a tantrum.   
Mike snorted as Dan left for Selina’s office.   
“Is he going to go scream at her?”, Mike wondered.   
“I hope so.”, said Amy. She kept imagining how pissed off that would make Selina, on top of how pissed the already was that Amy had agreed to give Dan the veto power. Indeed, moments later she heard Selina’s voice through the wall:  
“You want more than you already have, pretty boy? Seriously? Do you want to shit all over the Oval office? I don’t give a fuck! I’m the president of the fucking United States, and you don’t barge into my office like this! Just because you got yourself some veto power doesn’t mean I can’t veto your veto power! I veto it! Yeah, how do you like that? Apologize now, or you’re done! I’m sending you off to the war!”  
Mike looked at Amy.   
“You granted him the veto and didn’t tell him?”  
“Well, that’ll put him in his place. Also, Dan having a veto isn’t the worst thing that could happen, considering I’m his boss.”  
“Oh, you are evil.”  
“Evil alone won’t do, you also have to be smart. Even if Dan is a shit, he is quite useful. Wouldn’t want the nuisance of him cursing us on the other side.”  
Dan barged back into the room, looking as if he’d just survived a spiritual beating.   
“Knock, will you?”, Amy said.   
“This isn’t funny, Amy.”  
“Your contract is here. Selina signed it months ago.”


End file.
